Easy Ride - Veracruz Mexico
dark chocolate, asian pear, toffee
Taking the road less traveled? Well don’t...Do yourself a favor and take the Easy Ride. This mainstay offering delivers rich dark chocolate, caramel, and subtle fruits. Use this easy-to-brew coffee for cold brew, espresso, and filter, but most importantly, make sure to take it easy!
Origin: Veracruz, Mexico
Alititude: 1400- 1500 masl
Variety: Mixed Varietal
Process: Washed
Imported by Redfox Coffee Merchants
Notes from the importer:
Ohuapan is a small community located in the Tlaltetela district, one of the most important coffee-growing areas in the Huatusco region in Veracruz, Mexico. Huatusco produces approximately half of Veracruz’s coffee, and Tlaltetela contributes a huge part of that.
Ohuapan is located in the highest reaches of Tlaltetela (between 1400 and 1500 meters above sea level), about 5 hours by road from the Veracruz airport. The farms in this community have an average size of 10 hectares per producer. During the harvest season the producers here use family labor to meet all their needs. Typical shade trees used include native trees such as banana and ice cream bean trees. The varieties planted in the area are Bourbon, Garnica (a distinct Veracruz variety), and Marsellesa.
Ohuapan's coffee, like the rest of Veracruz, is harvested in cherry. Producers use mules to transport the coffee from the farms to the nearest section of dirt road, then transport the coffee in trucks or ATVs to the nearest collection center. Transit time between farms and the central collection center in Ohuapan varies from 45 minutes to 1 hour.
In the central processing plant, they use spring water to wash the cherry, which they then ferment for 48 hours in concrete tanks, followed by mechanical drying for 60 hours.
The lands in Ohuapan are not the most fertile in the area, so producers usually use a larger amount of Yara fertilizer and organic compost made from coffee pulp. Many of the lower areas in Ohuapan are dedicated entirely to livestock.
For many years, the Tlaltetela area was essentially known for producing undifferentiated-quality coffee in large volumes. Producers in the higher areas like Ohuapan weren’t motivated to continue doing the exhausting work of growing, processing, and selling the special varieties that they had, since in the end they would receive the same price as lower-quality coffees and their coffees would be blended.
After an exhaustive search carried out by Red Fox with the support of local partners, we were able to find the producers in the area that had differentiated coffees and were doing work that necessitated premium prices. This access to a new, differentiated market was a radical shift for the producers in the area since they now had a stable and secure market to sell their products.
This security is crucial for specialty coffee producers—knowing they have a long-term stable buyer with quality as a priority means they can invest in the medium and long term, not just in the short term. They can budget for endeavors that improve quality and save labor over time, as long as they know their buyer plans to stick around and keep prices as high as possible.
We roast on Tuesday and Thursday. Your order will be shipped or available for local pick up on Friday.